Effects of civic education on adolescents' organized and personal volunteering: Mediating role of civic interest

Abstract

This study explored the mediating effect of civic interest in the relationship between adolescents' civic education and volunteering (organized and personal). Participants were 967 adolescents in northern China (435 girls, 520 boys, 12 who did not specify their gender; Mage = 15.31 years), who completed the Civic Interest Scale, the Civic Education Scale, and the Volunteer Behavior Scale in a cross-sectional survey. Results indicated that personal volunteering was significantly more common than organized volunteering, and that civic interest partially mediated the relationships between civic education and organized volunteering, and between civic education and personal volunteering. School location (big city/small city vs. small town) moderated the mediating model, with larger mediating effects being present for respondents living in a small city compared to a big city, but no significant differences being found in the structural path between big-city and small-town settings or between smallcity and small-town settings. In sum, during adolescence, personal volunteering was the main form of volunteer activity, and the partial mediating mechanism of civic interest was common to both organized and personal volunteering types.